Our Solutions

Essential Elements for a Healthier Future

What are the Essential Elements for a Healthier Future?

A new roadmap to safer chemistry for retailers, manufacturers, and government

The essential elements are critical to charting a new course for our society away from the most dangerous chemicals and plastics and towards a healthier, toxic-free future for people, communities, workers, wildlife, and the environment.

For more than 40 years, Toxic-Free Future has demonstrated in policy and practice that it is possible to shift our economy away from the most dangerous chemicals and plastics and towards safer, low-hazard chemicals and materials. Building on this legacy, we developed The Essential Elements for a Healthier Future — a roadmap for businesses and governments to create a healthier and more sustainable world.

The Essential Elements for a Healthier Future

Everyone deserves clean air, clean water, and products that are safe for our families and communities. But today, toxic chemicals and plastics are everywhere in our daily lives—often without our knowledge or consent.

The Essential Elements for a Healthier Future is a shared policy solution framework for moving away from toxic chemicals and plastics and toward safer solutions that protect health.

Grounded in more than two decades of state and market policy successes, this approach puts people and health first and shows how prevention works in the real world.

Our goal is to eliminate highly toxic chemicals and plastics by 2040.

Together, these Essential Elements point to a future where health comes first, highly toxic chemicals and plastics are eliminated, safer solutions are the norm, and polluters are held accountable.

The Problem

Pollution from toxic chemicals and plastics is wreaking havoc on both human and planetary health and is inextricably linked to the climate crisis.

The vast majority of dangerous chemicals and plastics are made from fossil fuels, exponentially compounding the devastating impact of the oil and gas industry. And like climate change, the hazards of chemical pollution affect all of us with the heaviest burden falling disproportionately on the most vulnerable individuals and low-income communities and communities of color.

The Solution

Transitioning how we produce and package consumer goods to safer alternatives is more achievable than ever before. Advances in data science and safer chemistry mean that the dangers or hazards associated with the chemicals and plastics in products and packaging are knowable.

Safer chemicals and materials already exist and many more are possible with adequate investments and innovation. Some leading companies and governments are moving in the right direction and more and more are asking us to help define a healthier path forward.

This is why Toxic-Free Future developed the Essential Elements for a Healthier Future, a new roadmap that guides businesses and governments in the transition to safer chemicals and products for our families, communities, workers, and the environment.

Why is now the time for transformational change?

We are now at a time when a transition to safer chemicals, products, and packaging has proven to be both urgent and possible because:

Toxic Overuse of Chemicals and Plastics

People and all life on Earth is threatened by the overuse of highly hazardous chemicals and plastics, exceeding planetary boundaries of safety. The production of chemicals, thousands of which are used in plastics, has increased by 50-fold since 1950 with rapid growth continuing. Hormone-disrupting chemicals are linked to a 59% decline in sperm count in Western men over the past 40 years. Aggressive cancers, particularly in younger adults, are rising rapidly, with early-onset cancer rates increasing by nearly 80% worldwide between 1990 and 2019.

Rising Corporate Liabilities

Companies are facing escalating liabilities for the impacts of dangerous chemicals like PFAS “forever chemicals.” Thirty state attorneys general have initiated lawsuits against PFAS manufacturers and key users. The cleanup could reach $400 billion. These escalating costs are an enormous incentive for businesses to make transformative changes.

Environmental Injustice

There is growing acknowledgment of the imperative to address environmental injustice inherent in how people of color and low-income communities bear the disproportionate burden of pollution where toxic chemicals and plastics are made and disposed of. Indeed, Black Americans are 75% more likely to live near facilities that spew hazardous waste, and face double the risk of cancer from toxic air pollution compared to their white counterparts.

Chemical Industry's Role in the Climate Crisis

Solving the climate crisis requires transformation in the chemical industry, which is the biggest industrial user of fossil fuels and the third largest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide. About 90% of chemical production is from fossil fuels, including most of the 10,000+ chemicals used to make plastics. With global chemical production expected to double by 2030 and planned plastic production expected to triple by 2050, there is simply no way to meet climate goals without addressing chemicals and plastics. The chemical industry’s products are embedded in more than 96% of manufactured goods, but current-day industrial chemicals, the majority of which were created decades ago, were designed for cost and performance, not safety and sustainability. If we only focus on reducing embodied carbon without stopping the use of hazardous chemicals and materials, we will continue to face catastrophic impacts on the health of people, ecosystems, and our planet. This is not the green future envisioned by climate advocates.

Corporate and Government Responsibility

Protecting health should be the default—not an afterthought.

Governments and corporations must lead by adopting and fairly enforcing policies to phase out highly toxic chemicals and plastics and advance safer solutions. Strong policies should set clear goals, ban highly toxic chemicals and plastics, require transparency, incentivize safer solutions, and hold polluters accountable.

Transparency

People have a right to know what they are exposed to.

Workers, consumers, communities, and decision-makers need clear, complete information about the chemicals used in products, packaging, and manufacturing—and those released into the air, water and soil. This includes full ingredient disclosure and publicly available assessments of how toxic chemicals are, so safer choices can be made across the supply chain. Transparency is the foundation for healthier food, water, products, and communities.

Ban the Bad

Some chemicals and plastics are simply too dangerous to keep using.

Highly toxic chemicals and plastics must be phased out of products, packaging, manufacturing, and buildings. When groups of chemicals are known to be highly hazardous, they should be phased out together—often called a class-based approach—to prevent replacing one toxic chemical with another.

Some highly toxic chemicals include: PFAS, phthalates, bisphenols, toxic flame retardants, and plastics of high concern.

Safer Solutions

A safer future depends on choosing chemicals and materials that are inherently less toxic and work without harming health throughout their lifecycle. Businesses, governments, and institutions should invest in developing and scaling safer alternatives—backed by publicly available assessments of how toxic they are, so we don’t replace one toxic chemical with another.

Accountability

Communities should not bear the health and cleanup costs of toxic pollution. Polluters must be held accountable for cleanup, medical monitoring, and harm caused to people and the environment. Governments must also act swiftly to support impacted communities and enforce strong health protections.